


The Specimen

by BlueNeutrino



Category: Deus Ex (Video Games), Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Genre: Angst, F/M, Guilt, Lab experiments on unethically acquired tissue samples
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-30 22:56:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20781485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueNeutrino/pseuds/BlueNeutrino
Summary: Waste tissue from Adam's augmentation surgeries makes its way into the hands of the Illuminati. In a lab in Singapore, Megan Reed is handed a box.





	The Specimen

It was never yours, yet he gave it to you anyway.

You tried your best to keep it. Your hands made for science, stained with chemicals, fumbling to care for such delicate art. He tried to take it back, once.

Now the choice is no longer his.

In Singapore, they hand you a box. Opaque white plastic, no larger than the tupperware you used to keep at home back in Detroit. Still cool from the freezer. Biological specimen labels taped to the side. _Patient X, _one reads.

_How did they get it?_

You don't ask.

With trembling fingers, you pry back the lid. _For your experiments, _they tell you, and you could swear you've been here before.

_I never meant to toy with it._

The organ inside gleams red. The same shade you watched spill across a laboratory floor half a world away. For you, still for you, long after you gave up whatever right to it you ever had.

_I tried to love you, Adam. I swear I tried..._

In another life, he’d given it away: laid himself open and let you in close enough to touch. Flesh fades, but the memory lingers: him and you, skin blazing, bodies tangling, and the thunder of his pulse alongside yours.

It's gone silent now.

With the greatest care you've ever shown it, you reach into the box to lay your hand upon Adam Jensen's heart. _Tissue sample, _says the label. As if that's anything new. Despite all you've put it through, something inside you recoils at how it's turned so cold.

_It was never mine, but he gave it to me anyway. _

You wish that you could give it back.

**Author's Note:**

> While the canon isn't exactly clear and consistent on this, let's assume Adam's augmented heart in Mankind Divided is a full replacement for his organic one installed by Sarif along with the rest of his augs.


End file.
